How to acquire a shared management tool?
“To be effective, S&OP must be adapted to the organization and culture of the company.”
Context
The project to implement an S&OP executive was decided by the client’s executive committee in order to improve the management and execution of their strategy in a context of increasing complexity of their business – volatile demand, increased multi-sourcing, under or oversaturation of their industrial sites, pressure on cash… In this context, the client wished to acquire a shared management tool to ensure the optimal global, sought on a profit basis and not only volume.
Approach
After a phase of valuing the benefits of an S&OP approach (shared vision of plans in terms of volume and value, management of joint innovations with Marketing, standardized capacity trade-offs and facilities, etc.), we adapted the standard S&OP processes to the specificities of the client’s organization and value chain before developing new tools and new organizations accordingly.
Finally, we also managed the main difficulty of any transformation project: resistance to change. The latter is all the greater as these changes have an impact on all functions. Sharing a single data, taking responsibility for choices, cascading and enforcing decisions are necessary but sometimes difficult to achieve.
Results
The project was deployed in 2.5 years on a worldwide basis. Its success is linked to the constant mobilization of pivotal relays throughout the world, in particular with the Supply Chain Managers of each of the subsidiaries. Thanks to our experience acquired on numerous S&OP projects, we have been able to co-construct with these relays a target process that takes into account their local specificities (mature markets / Export, local factory or subcontractor…). We have invested and deployed an innovative tool (SAP PBI) capable of supporting the process, building communication and training materials to help each Supply Chain Manager deploy the solution locally.
